Steny Hoyer: Lawmakers ‘would be kidding ourselves’ to push for gun control in GOP House

The second-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives doesn’t think a Republican-majority Congress will address gun control in the aftermath of the Aurora massacre — but he is forceful in emphasizing his personal support for a proposed assault weapons ban.

At a breakfast interview with reporters hosted by the Christian Science Monitor today, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said that advocating for greater gun control is “the right thing for us to do,” especially, he added, in light of the intended nature of such weapons.

“Assault weapons have one purpose and one purpose only, to kill a lot of people quickly. No other purpose. I don’t think anybody hunts deer, quail, geese with assault weapons,” Hoyer said. “And if they do, they shouldn’t.”

But lawmakers “would be kidding ourselves to put legislation on the floor” in a GOP-controlled Congress, Hoyer added. While the District of Columbia and seven states, including Hoyer’s home state of Maryland, have assault weapons bans, the Minority Whip stressed that lawmaker efforts to assert greater gun control, “even in light of this tragedy, in light of the Columbine tragedy, would not pass.”

What’s needed, he added, is a stronger dialogue on the issue.

“I think we have to elevate the senses in America,” Hoyer said. “We ought to have a rational control of weapons that are designed to kill a lot of people.”

For such a dialogue to be productive, he said, especially in the face of the power of the National Rifle Association and its political backers, the Republican party would need to become more open to compromise and bipartisan action.
“I think the Republican party would have to become far less reliant on the far right,” Hoyer said. “It enjoys, or suffers from, take your pick, the narrowest base I’ve seen of any political party in my political career.”

He was highly critical of the GOP, especially its Congressional representatives, throughout the breakfast, calling the current legislative body the “least productive, most confrontational” he’s ever worked with throughout his political career.

The Republicans became a particular subject of Hoyer’s ridicule when discussing a typo in a recent GOP-sponsored bill that left out a key “un” before employment, and, as a result, calls for the federal government to stop issuing new regulations until unemployment reaches 94 percent.